Meeting of Minds
by AssertionsOfRoland
Summary: Alone and dying, Alex Shepard makes a choice.
1. Decisions

Alex Shepard knows he is dying.

He and the crystal-clarity of blood loss and shock are old acquaintances. The terrible cold of third-degree burns is no surprise. His heart is beating so quickly it hurts, but that's to be expected. The sterile air of this strange platform burns his rough and savaged throat with every breath. He doesn't know how much longer he has, but it can't be long.

Above, the wingless hornet of a geth frigate comes apart in silent majesty. It does not explode in a dramatic fireball. Science fiction enthusiasts might be disappointed. Instead, the Reaper cannon cores the bow of the frigate and guts it from stem to stern. Smaller secondary explodes cracks the hull like an egghell. Armor plating bulges and shatters; the blue lightning of eezo reactions bursts in spastic fits – the last spasms of a corpse.

He swears he can see the tiny forms of geth platforms flailing as they are scattered into the void. Why? The distances must be astronomical.

Perhaps that soft-spoken monster behind his has included some sort of telescoping effect in his artificial atmosphere. Perhaps he likes to watch his creations at work, supposing he doesn't see in some more direct fashion. Or perhaps it's just a not-so-subtle incentive: move your crippled, dying ass before you bleed out and have to watch all the fools you dragged to their deaths burn.

He notes the quarian ship slide up and retaliate with grim satisfaction. Momentary shafts of bright light tear soundlessly through space. About time those two realized that squabbling simply because they always had before was a waste of time.

A pity it took the galaxy roasting for them to find common ground.

"You are wasting time," the Intelligence tells him. "Choose."

"Shut up," he mutters, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and his nostrils. He hasn't moved. Three paths, all to loathsome ends. A choice of damnations. What a waste. So many dead so this angel-faced monster can resolve an imaginary conflict-

Focus.

Maybe he could order the fleet to fire on the Citadel. Eventually it should crack – but maybe there are still people alive. The arms were closed. He saw lights moving in the arms below…All those people, gathered into the **one** place hey thought it would be safe. All they've done with their damned Crucible (ha! someone had a sense of sick humor!) is ensure that everyone burns together...

Damn it. Damn him and his pack of pretentious, self-aggrandizing toys. They've left him no good choices.

"You will die soon," the Intelligence reminds him. "Choose."

"Shut up!**"** he hisses.

"Every minute you waste here, more of your friends die."

"I **know,** you wretched, genocidal malfunctioning Atari! I know!" The scream makes his chest rattle and bloody phlegm splatter the metal plating below him. For a terrible moment he thinks he's about to faint, beating back the fuzzy darkness at the corners of his eyes with an effort of will. "Can't you call your dogs off?" He watches a Reaper recoil as dreadnaught fire peppers it and resists the urge to cheer. Hull sections buckle and send chunks probably as large as fighters spilling outwards, peculiarly-hued "blood" spraying from the wounded monstrosity.

"My Reapers take their purpose from me, not their battlefield orders," the Intelligence replies. Has the bastard learned to sound smug? "You should probably hurry."

"I hope your Reapers **scream **when they burn," he snaps, and limps forward beneath the flickering light of gods at war above. He has never hated anything in his life as much as he hates them all in this moment. The purity is the most glorious high he's ever been on. Better than combat stims, better than red sand, better than afterglow. He wishes he could bask in it forever.

"And your friends?" the Intelligence asks, with godlike detachment. His quiet inaction and undertones of pity feels more obscene than the casual way Harbinger obliterated half of Hammer. "The geth? Your Intelligence?"

Every god of every species, past or present, damn him! "You think I've never ordered men to their deaths?" he retorts weakly. But it's hollow. He can't have that much blood on his hands and he knows it. The thought makes his knees go weak. He can't. He just can't.

"I know." The Intelligence's pity feels like an insult.

God damn it, who decided to saddle _him_ with a galaxy's worth of responsibility? A bloody squad seems too much sometimes! He wasn't trained for this.

The Intelligence speaks again in the stolen voice of a murdered boy. "No one else _has_ to die, Shepard."

The light of burning Earth throws horrible ruddy light back across his face and reminds him of all the corpses at the Intelligence's feet. "Nobody had to die in the first place!" he snaps. "This is **your** fault! Don't pretend you're above this!"

"Will the last act of your life be genocide, then?" The Intelligence sounds curious, not angry. "This is not the Commander Shepard I expect. Evidence suggests you are a unifier. Always a second chance. Always bridging gaps. Why should synthesis repel you so?"

Shepard ignores him. What point is there arguing with the little monster? You don't lecture busted machines. You turn them off. You throw them out.

His hand trembles as he raises the battered old Carnifex in his hand. Mordin's gun. Thank god he brought it for emergencies. His shotgun is slag somewhere hundreds of miles below and a bit to the left. A long shot, but he doesn't see why he needs to get any closer to the conduit to fire on it. The trigger gives gently under his finger…

And he remembers metal flaps unfolding like petals and a dry voice. He remembers strange mechanical eyes. He remembers the metal simulacrum of a woman and his crippled pilot sitting together in easy chairs, debating attractiveness. His finger drifts away from the trigger and the pistol falls from his hand to clatter on the metal floor.

Maybe Javik was right.

"Sentimental," the Intelligence says. "I suppose I can't blame you." The ghostly child is in front of him suddenly, transparent features placid. "You've lost a lot of blood. Let me help you."

And he looks ahead. Sees the beautiful shape of the Normandy outlined against the solar wind. Sees the ghastly many-armed shape rising from beneath it like a monster from the deep, baleful yellow eyes blazing with hunger and hate. He can hear that horrible bellowing cry with perfect clarity, even though vacuum makes it impossible. And he _knows _with absolute certainty that the only reason it hasn't fired is it wants him to watch it snuff out the last home he has in this universe.

He's seen it so many times in his dreams. Dreams of the Normandy's hull being peeled away by flashing beams, tentacles plucking him from the wreckage and tossing into their owner's howling maw. Dreams of husks with his friends' faces bashing down his cabin door. Dreams of tendrils bursting from his own cybernetic systems and crawling through his veins to suck him dry.

His diseased subconscious? Or the Reapers crawling inside his skull to play? It doesn't matter. Harbinger knows he's alive. It wants him to _watch_. The notion that something so incomprehensibly ancient can be so…petty would be comical, if it wasn't terrifying.

Alex Shepard makes his decision. He spits in the Intelligence's direction and breaks into a clumsy, hopping run, sliding and slipping on the blood running from his wounded legs. He makes it halfway across the bridge towards the strange apparatus on its plinth before his leg gives way and he topples onto his face.

He drags himself the rest of the way, leaving a red smear on pristine metal. Then it's a desperate heave, grabbing hold of the handles and hauling himself as erect as he can manage. He is going to die (again! the thought makes him laugh half-hysterically) on his feet. His hands curl around arcing contact points, accepting the jolts of electricity the touch sends sparking through him. Shepard grits his teeth and tries not to think of what he's doing – of the sheer hubris in thinking he could challenge these monsters in their own domains…

And the last thing Alex hears as the world dissolves into all-familiar burning, blinding pain is the Intelligence's short, disappointed sigh.


	2. Confrontations

He still hurts. Something about that seems…unfair.

Darkness, lit from within like the reflection of a flame within hot smoke, swirls around Alex Shepard. Orange light runs in cracks and lines of terrible power through the gloom. The air is heavy with sullen heat and pressure, and so humid it feels more like swimming than standing. There is an impression of wind – hot, wet, and forceful, snapping across him in fierce whip-crack gusts, as if the world itself is trying to beat him down.

It reminds him of Haestrom.

No sooner has the thought crossed his mind than the air around him blurs. He seems to see the faint, filmy outlines of bleached white buildings, and the orange light turns red-violet. It sends a shiver through him.

This is not real, he realizes. This cannot be real. He remembers touching the geth server, the way his mind spun the image of a vast and pristine landscape out of raw data. It's doing it again.

The darkness thickens. Cyclopean pillars rise out of the gloom, and lines of flame carve the forms of alien structures into his surroundings. Bubbles of orange light rise in shimmering updrafts. A great, many-eyed shape gathers shape and substance, presiding over its blasted court of memories, the epicenter of light and shadow.

Then that means…

**SHEPARD.**

Alex Shepard is a reasonably brave man. He's been no strange to violence since his late teens. The first time he saw a man die was in a freak accident during EVA training aboard the _Einstein_. Since then he's seen evil in forms he would have never dreamed existed – men twisted until everything about who they were inside had come apart, worlds' crusts cracked like eggshells. Evil cold and purposeful and mechanical – as soulless as its authors, to whom life holds no value and sentiment no purchase. Intelligences as dead to doubt and uncertainty as pity.

The voice ringing from every corner of this digital abyss makes him want to do nothing more than curl up in a ball and hide. If malice were a sound, this would be that sound.

**YOU PERSIST. **

And this is when Alex realizes that he has never entirely understood the nature of the being in whose mind he has trapped himself.

Harbinger is artificial, not mechanical. Harbinger has not spoken in even, detached tones because the Reaper is divorced from emotion. It merely has not had reason to emote. Harbinger has existed in isolated, solitary supremacy that every single act of resistance of Alex Shepard's life, of the galaxy's current Cycle, of the Protheans before them…was cause for, at most, momentary irritation.

**AN ANNOYANCE**, it had called him. And it had spoken honestly, because the dictates of Harbinger are objective and immutable. It has no reason to lie, because to lie requires it to acknowledge that other sapiences matter enough to deceive. Harbinger has never been surprised. It has never entirely bent its will to the continuation of the Cycle.

Until now.

**HOW HAS THIS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED?** the tidal-wave of a voice demands. Long, spidery limbs spin out of the memory of a city in smoke and fire, snapping in and closing on Alex's imaginary arms and legs.

Alex feels the Reaper's attention lock upon him fully for the first time in his life, and it is all he can do not to fall apart right then and there.

"The Cru-" He swallows the words being pried out of him before they can finish. It feels as if Harbinger's attention is flaying him right down to the bones. The memory of melted armor splinters and shatters from him in a heartbeat. Next is the memory of clothes. He is naked and alone in the darkness of this monster's mind, and veins of jagged burning yellow are worming their way up his arms and legs.

**UNEXPECTED**. **YOU HAVE CONTACTED THE INTELLIGENCE**.

There is no purpose in lying anymore. Not when their minds are touching. "The Crucible," he grits out, pushing back against the pressure crushing him. "You didn't stop it in time."

Harbinger's curiosity is almost as terrible as its scorn. And it laughs. Its laughter is the worst sound in the world, a mental static that turns his thoughts to broken glass. **THE INTELLIGENCE HAS DISCARDED US,** it says.

And the world of Harbinger around him, the world of the Reapers – for he is beginning to see the gleaming threads of light spinning out from this realm to others - _blurs_ in the force of **hate** that he is endlessly grateful only touched him briefly. The water-air of Harbinger boils. Alien structures shatter, and a bellow loud enough to snuff out the stars rings out again and again and again.

He tries not to smile. For once in their respective lives, Alex Shepard and Harbinger have found common ground.

It doesn't last. The Reaper's will bores into him like a knife, forces him backwards. A towering resentment scours all thought from his mind as something older than _stars_ turns all its rage towards him.

**YOU HAVE CHANGED NOTHING, SHEPARD. WE ARE THE APEX OF EVOLUTION, NOT THE INTELLIGENCE'S TOOLS. WE WILL NOT BE SUPPLANTED. WE ARE ETERNAL. **

The not-air around them twists and remakes itself, stygian darkness becoming the starry void of true space, and he feels himself twisted around to face the view below. Pincer-limbs of light seize him and hold him fast. Make him watch.

Ships burn as Harbinger's wrath sweeps golden across the stars. They fire back, peppering the unseen Reaper with lances of dreadnaught fire and Javelins and torpedoes. But too little, too late. Another cruiser dies with a glance.

And then the Reaper's mind recoils. The scream that reverberates through Harbinger shatters data streams and cracks its mindscape into fragments. The great leviathan suspended above writhes in the grip of an agony it has not felt since before humans discovered how to farm. Its thread-limbs loosen.

**YOU DARE?**

And Shepard lands on his feet. He lifts an arm and the imagined bulbous structure of geth combat software unfolds out of the air in smooth balletic perfection, hissing gently. Yellow cancers are burnt out of his arms and legs in seconds; cloth and polymers spin themselves from the ether, a defiant N7 burning bright blue on his collar.

"This hurts you," he mocked, savoring the way it made him feel, and pulled the trigger again.


End file.
